The present invention relates in general to telecommunications, and more particularly to a terminating number screening process used to block selected numbers from future calls on a operator platform.
Recent studies in the telecommunication industry has estimated call fraud losses cost communication companies five billion dollars per year. This industry study also shows that the fraud losses will continue to increase in the future. The telecommunication fraud losses primarily occur as a result of lost or stolen portable calling card products and Operator Service products in highly populated areas. Portable calling card products generally refer to any Operator Service billed products including calling card, credit cards, collect calls, calls that are billed to a third party, and calls that are billed to automatic identification numbers (ANI).
Telecommunication fraud can be committed in various ways. One example of such fraud includes call looping. Call looping is a method which the perpetrators or hackers use to circumvent restrictions that telecommunication carriers put into the networks to control portable billing products. This call looping fraud may be committed, for example, through a residential automatic number identification (ANI) which has been call forwarded to a compromised Private Branch Exchange (PBX) equipment.
Looping may also be used by perpetrators to hide or avoid detection of their origination number. Call looping enables the perpetrator to generate several different call legs while masking his true point of origination. The perpetrator""s purpose for call looping is to obtain a calling card product or the use of other billing options through operator service providers in order to terminate calls to high fraud phone numbers. High fraud phone numbers generally refer to phone numbers that have repeated occurrences of fraud. These high fraud phone numbers can be domestic or international numbers. These terminating numbers, i.e., the destination dialed digits that the caller is trying to call, may include chat and party lines in which callers use long distance devices.
Looping may be committed by several avenues, such as a company private branch exchange (PBX) equipment or telephones that are call forwarded to an access number. Briefly, an access number is defined as a number that takes a caller to a carrier platform or network. Example of an access number include xe2x80x9c1-800xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9c1-888xe2x80x9d calling card access numbers, xe2x80x9c10-10-222xe2x80x9d, or xe2x80x9c10-10-321xe2x80x9d dial around codes. Call looping perpetrators may loop calls through one carrier, or they may loop them through multiple carriers. Looping takes many forms and may use many different billing products. The end result is to by-pass the blocks and to make it difficult to identify the origination point.
The following scenario describes an example of call looping. A perpetrator, physically located in New York, dials a local access number by using a stolen calling card. The stolen calling card is issued by a long distance carrier and, therefore, belongs to the long distance carrier. Furthermore, the long distance carrier has placed blocks in the New York area to control international termination dialing. Because the perpetrator cannot dial the international number, the perpetrator connects to a domestic termination number belonging to a business in Iowa that is equipped with PBX. The perpetrator is now able to dial xe2x80x9c9xe2x80x9d for an outside line from the Iowa Business, and xe2x80x9c00xe2x80x9d for the long distance operator. Once at the operator, the perpetrator is able to call an international number and bill it to the number that they are originating from. In this case, the PBX in Iowa. The perpetrator is able to call an international number because the long distance carrier has fewer blocks on the originating location of Iowa for international destinations.
In the foregoing example, by utilizing multiple legs, i.e., New York to Iowa using the stolen calling card, and Iowa to an international site using the PBX, the perpetrator successfully bypassed the long distance carrier""s network blocks and created two individual billing records that are not linked together, thus masking the true originating point.
Another example of a call looping is consummated by using multiple carriers. A perpetrator, physically located in Netherlands, dials an in-country international access number using a stolen calling card. The stolen calling card belongs to a first long distance carrier who has placed blocks on the Netherlands locations to control international or domestic termination locations. The perpetrator inputs a terminating number that is another access number for a second long distance carrier. By using two carrier networks to effect an international call, the perpetrator has successfully bypassed the network blocks placed in service by the first carrier. The true destination cannot be determined by the first carrier because the second leg, i.e., second carrier""s access number to the termination number, only appears as the second carrier""s call information.
Given various ways through which a fraud can occur in the existing telecommunications network systems, it is highly desirable to provide a method and system for screening call termination numbers before a call is made to any existing destination or terminating numbers, regardless of the path or paths taken to make the call.
An existing method utilized by many carriers typically block fraudulent calls based on a stolen billing product, for example, a calling card number. Thus, with this existing method, calls made with specific calling card numbers known to the carriers as stolen products are blocked. However, since a fraud perpetrator may have hundreds of stolen billing products at disposal, the perpetrator can eventually find a billing product that is not blocked to place a call to high fraud phone numbers.
Therefore, it is also highly desirable to be able to block fraudulent calls regardless of billing products with which a call is made.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method and system to block select number from any future calls on the operator platform, thereby preventing fraudulent calls to specific terminating numbers residing in international or domestic locations.
The present invention also provides the ability to deny call completions based upon a blocked domestic or international number and enables service providers to control fraudulent usage while minimizing the impact on other existing customers.
In accordance with the goals of the present invention, there is provided a method and system for terminating number screening which is designed to block portable billing products from terminating to a designated high fraud domestic or international terminating number. When a call is placed and it is billed to a portable billing product, the sequence of the dialed digits of the terminating number is verified against the terminating number screening database. If the sequence of dialed digits is found in the terminating number screening database, the call is denied. Denying calls to the selected terminating numbers effectively prevents fraudulent calls reoccurring at the same terminating number.
The terminating numbers stored in the screening database of the present invention are generally collected by conducting research, pattern matching, fraud trends, or other analysis based on calls made to a specific number to determine if that specific number is a high fraud phone number. From such research and analysis, if a specific number is determined to be a high fraud phone number, that number is stored in the database as a number to be blocked.